How to Screen Record on Mac With Audio (2026)

You record a five-minute walkthrough, play it back, and the video is perfect. The audio is your voice, a bit of room hiss, and total silence where the app you were demoing was supposed to be talking. Nothing you clicked was wrong. The setting you were looking for doesn't exist.

That gap is the whole reason this search term is so popular. Screen recording on a Mac is genuinely easy — one keyboard shortcut — right up until you need the sound your Mac is making. So let's split the problem: the built-in tools first, then the missing piece, then the real fixes and what each one costs you.

The setting you're looking for isn't missing — it was never there

Apple's two screen recorders, the Screenshot toolbar and QuickTime Player, both let you pick a microphone. Neither offers system audio: the sound coming out of your Mac from a browser tab, a video call, a game, a music app. As of macOS Tahoe 26.6 in August 2026, that's still the case — Apple's own support page for screen recording lists a microphone, a mouse-click option, a timer, and a save location, and nothing else about audio.

The reason is architectural, not an oversight. A microphone is an input device, and the recorder reads inputs. Your speakers are an output. macOS has no built-in loopback that turns an output back into an input, so there's simply nothing in that dropdown for the recorder to pick up. Every workaround you'll read about — free or paid — is some version of manufacturing that missing loopback.

Worth saying clearly, because people ask it as a yes/no question: yes, you can screen record on a Mac, and yes you can screen record with audio. It's specifically system audio that needs help.

Shift-Command-5: the fastest way to screen record on Mac

This is the Screenshot app, available since macOS Mojave 10.14, and it's what most people should use.

Record with the Screenshot toolbar

1. Press Shift Command 5. A small toolbar appears near the bottom of the screen.
2. Choose one of the three recording buttons on the right: Record Entire Screen, Record Selected Window (added in macOS Tahoe 26), or Record Selected Portion. Drag the selection borders to adjust the area.
3. Click Options. Under Microphone, pick your mic — this is off by default, which is why so many recordings come out silent.
4. Still in Options: set a timer if you need a few seconds to get ready, turn on Show Mouse Clicks for tutorials, and check the Save to location.
5. On supported Macs running Tahoe 26 or later, pick a capture format: SDR (Most Compatible) records H.264, HDR records HEVC.
6. Click Record. For a window recording, click the window you want.
7. To stop, click the Stop button in the menu bar or press Command Control Esc. Press Esc before you start to cancel.

Record ten seconds first. Every time, before anything that matters. Start, say a sentence, play a second of audio from whatever app you're demoing, stop, and watch it back. The two failures that cost people a full take are a microphone set to a disconnected headset and system audio that never got captured — and neither is fixable afterward.

QuickTime Player, and when it's still worth opening

QuickTime is the older route and does roughly the same job. It's still useful for two things: it opens the finished recording immediately for trimming, and its separate New Audio Recording mode is a quick way to capture audio alone.

Record with QuickTime Player

1. Open QuickTime Player from Applications.
2. Choose File → New Screen Recording, or press Control Command N.
3. On recent macOS versions this hands you straight to the Screenshot toolbar above. If you get QuickTime's own Screen Recording window instead, click the arrow next to the Record button to choose a microphone and toggle Show Mouse Clicks in Recording.
4. Click Record, then click once for the full screen or drag to select an area and click Start Recording.
5. Stop from the menu bar or with Command Control Esc. QuickTime opens the file automatically.

One quirk to know about: some apps refuse to be captured. Apple names its own TV app as an example, and other DRM-protected video behaves the same way — you'll get a black rectangle where the video should be.

What macOS can actually do, versus what Apple wired up

Here's the frustrating part. The capability exists at the OS level. macOS has had ScreenCaptureKit since macOS 13, Core Audio process taps since 14.4, and a permission category called Screen & System Audio Recording in System Settings → Privacy & Security. Apple's own documentation says you can let an app record your screen and audio, or just your audio.

That's how modern third-party recorders capture internal sound with no driver install: they ask for that permission and use those APIs. Apple just never rewired the Screenshot toolbar or QuickTime to use them. So the honest summary as of writing is that macOS can record system audio — Apple's own two recording tools simply don't.

The free route: a virtual audio device

BlackHole is the standard answer, and it deserves the reputation — it's free, open source, and adds essentially no latency. What it actually does is pretend to be a pair of speakers. Send your Mac's audio to those fake speakers and a recorder can read them back as an input.

Grab the 2-channel version unless you know you need more; the channel counts ship as separate installers.

System audio only

1. Download and install BlackHole 2ch. If macOS blocks the installer, approve it in System Settings → Privacy & Security, then restart.
2. Open Audio MIDI Setup (in Applications → Utilities).
3. Click the + in the bottom-left corner and choose Create Multi-Output Device.
4. Tick both BlackHole 2ch and your speakers or headphones. This is what lets you still hear what you're recording. Rename it something obvious.
5. Set that Multi-Output Device as your output in System Settings → Sound → Output.
6. In the Screenshot toolbar's Options menu (or QuickTime's), choose BlackHole 2ch as the microphone.
7. Record. When you're done, switch your sound output back to your normal speakers.

Want your voice in there too? The recorder only accepts one input, so you have to merge the two before it ever gets there.

System audio plus your voice

1. In Audio MIDI Setup, click + again and choose Create Aggregate Device.
2. Tick BlackHole 2ch and your microphone.
3. Turn on Drift Correction for the microphone, so the two sources don't slide out of sync over a long recording.
4. Select that Aggregate Device as the microphone in your recorder. It arrives as one mixed track — you can't rebalance mic and system levels afterward, so set your system volume before you start.

The honest tradeoffs. While your output is a Multi-Output Device, the volume keys on your keyboard stop working — you adjust volume inside each app instead. Every device in the chain has to run at the same sample rate, or you get crackling or silence. And it's easy to forget to switch back, which is the classic "why is my Mac silent on this call" moment. None of that is a dealbreaker; all of it is why paid tools exist.

When to pay instead

Two situations justify spending money. The first is doing this often. Loopback from Rogue Amoeba is $99 one-time and replaces the whole Audio MIDI Setup ritual with a canvas where you drag sources into a virtual device — including individual apps, so you can capture a browser tab without capturing your notifications.

The second is wanting separate tracks. Recorders built on ScreenCaptureKit — OBS Studio is the free, well-known one — capture internal audio natively with no virtual driver at all, and typically keep the mic and system audio on their own tracks so you can fix the balance in editing. You grant the Screen & System Audio Recording permission once and you're done. If you're comparing dedicated capture tools, our roundup of the best meeting recorder tools goes deeper on the tradeoffs.

Recording a call properly

The virtual-device setup captures a video call the same way it captures anything else: the other people's voices come through system audio, yours comes through the mic, and an Aggregate Device merges them. It works.

It's usually the wrong tool anyway. Zoom, Meet, and Teams all have native recording that produces a cleaner file, separates speakers, and — importantly — shows everyone on the call that recording is happening. A screen recorder does none of that. Before you record any call, read our guide to recording a Zoom meeting, which covers the consent rules in full; they apply to a screen recording of a call exactly as much as to the record button inside the app.

Where the file goes, and how big it gets

Recordings save to your Desktop by default, named Screen Recording [date] at [time].mov. To change that, open the Screenshot toolbar with Shift Command 5, click Options, and pick a folder under Save to — Documents, or a custom folder via Other Location. QuickTime asks where to save when you close the window instead.

Size is the other surprise. A 1080p H.264 recording at 30fps runs somewhere around 50 to 100 MB per minute depending on how much the screen is moving; 60fps roughly doubles it, and 4K climbs steeply from there. HEVC cuts that by roughly 40–50% at similar quality, which is why the HDR option in Tahoe produces smaller files than you'd expect. A ten-minute demo can easily land near a gigabyte.

Two quick size wins. Record a window or a selected portion rather than a whole 5K display — fewer pixels beats any compression setting. And if you need to email the result, open it in QuickTime and use File → Export As at 720p; for a talking-head walkthrough the quality difference is close to invisible and the file often drops by three quarters.

Getting a transcript out of the recording

A twenty-minute recording nobody wants to rewatch is a poor archive. A transcript makes it searchable, quotable, and summarizable in seconds.

macOS has less built in here than you'd hope. Voice Memos and Notes can transcribe on Apple silicon Macs running macOS 15 or later, but that applies to recordings made in those apps, and it isn't available in every region. There's no system-wide "transcribe this .mov" command, so you're extracting the audio track and moving it somewhere else — we walk through the options in how to transcribe audio to text.

The shortcut, if what you actually wanted was the conversation rather than the pixels, is to capture the audio side separately with a tool built for it. Laxis isn't a screen recorder — it won't capture your display — but it records and transcribes calls on Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams in 100+ languages, then pulls out a summary and action items with owners. Run it alongside your screen capture and you end up with the video for the visuals and a searchable transcript for everything that was said. The free plan covers 300 minutes a month; paid tiers start at $15.99 per user. Our comparison of AI note-takers covers the alternatives if you want to shop around.

Get the words, not just the pixels

Laxis captures the audio side of your Zoom, Meet, and Teams calls, turns it into a searchable transcript, and pulls out a summary plus action items with owners. 100+ languages, bot-free capture, free plan with 300 minutes a month.

Try Laxis Free

The bottom line

The reason this is confusing isn't that Mac screen recording is hard. It's that the easy tool and the hard problem live in different places: Shift-Command-5 handles video and voice in about four seconds, and system audio — the thing people assume is a checkbox — is a separate piece of plumbing you install once and then mostly forget about. Set up BlackHole on a slow afternoon rather than five minutes before you need it, and this stops being a question you ever search again.

Frequently asked questions

Can you screen record on a Mac?

Yes. Press Shift-Command-5 to open the Screenshot toolbar, then choose Record Entire Screen, Record Selected Window, or Record Selected Portion. It's built into every Mac running macOS Mojave 10.14 or later, needs no download, and saves a .mov file to your Desktop when you stop.

How do you screen record with audio on a Mac?

For your own voice, open the Screenshot toolbar with Shift-Command-5, click Options, and select your microphone before recording. For your Mac's own sound you need a virtual audio device such as BlackHole, routed through a Multi-Output Device in Audio MIDI Setup, then chosen as the recorder's input.

Why is there no sound in my Mac screen recording?

Almost always because no microphone was selected. The audio option in the Screenshot toolbar is off by default and resets more often than people expect. If your voice is there but app audio isn't, that's the other cause: macOS never captures system audio without a virtual audio device.

Can macOS record internal audio without extra software?

Not with Apple's own tools. The Screenshot toolbar and QuickTime Player only offer a microphone, still true in macOS Tahoe 26 as of writing. macOS does have a Screen & System Audio Recording permission that third-party apps use, so a recorder built on ScreenCaptureKit can capture internal audio driver-free.

Where do Mac screen recordings save?

By default to your Desktop, with the filename Screen Recording followed by the date and time, in .mov format. You can change the destination in the Screenshot toolbar under Options, in the Save to section. QuickTime recordings instead prompt you for a location when you close the window.

How do I get a transcript from a Mac screen recording?

There's no system-wide transcribe command in macOS. Voice Memos and Notes transcribe on Apple silicon Macs running macOS 15 or later, but only for recordings made in those apps. Otherwise, extract the audio track and run it through a transcription service, or capture the conversation separately with a dedicated meeting recorder.